The requirements that basic_json places on its eleven template parameters
were only implied by how the library uses the resulting object_t, array_t,
string_t, etc. Consumers had to discover them by trial and error.
Add "Template Parameter Requirements" collecting them, split into what is
always required and what is only required when a particular part of the API
is instantiated. Notable findings that were previously undocumented:
- ObjectType must provide a key_compare member type (actual_object_comparator
names object_t::key_compare in both arms of a std::conditional), and its
third template parameter is used as a comparator, so std::unordered_map
cannot be used without a wrapper.
- ArrayType must provide capacity() -- push_back(), emplace_back(),
operator+=(), and operator[](size_type) call it unconditionally -- and
needs random-access iterators, so std::deque and std::list do not work.
- StringType needs contiguous, null-terminated data(), a one-byte value_type,
and either assignability from std::to_string or an ADL int_to_string().
- NumberFloatType must be float, double, or long double for parsing and
serialization; the integer types must satisfy std::is_integral.
- AllocatorType must be stateless, support incomplete types, and use plain
pointers.
- BooleanType and the number types are union members and must be trivial.
Link the new page from the basic_json overview, the types feature page, and
the individual type alias pages, and correct the container examples given for
ObjectType (std::unordered_map) and ArrayType (std::list), which do not work.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018hxZxz8svM54c6ATEvXp5E
Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>